For some time, developers on Open Source Catholic have been working on formalizing a standard for sharing Catholic Parish directory information online through a universal XML format, in the thread Sharing Parish Directory Information Online.

We are still in the early development stages of this format, and we would love your help and discussion in that thread. Below is the latest work on the format, which is changing rapidly. Until we have a set standard, consider the information on this page to be in early alpha stages.

A Drupal module to incorporate this format into a parish or diocese’s Drupal website is currently being written: Parish Info (part of the Open Parish Initiative).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

1234567 Latin St. Joseph's Church 162 http://www.paradise.com America/Chicago 2012-01-01T22:40:27-06:00 1-314-444-4444 1-314-444-4444</phone> parish@example.com 777 Heaven Blvd</addressStreet> P.O. Box 2251</addressStreet2> Eden Eternity 333333 33.823568 119.542524 </location> Saturday (Vigil) 16:30 English Gym Sunday 09:30 English Saturday 16:00 16:15 First Friday 08:45 10:30 </parish> </parishdata> </code> Some notes on this format:
  • lastUpdated date is in ISO 8601 format
  • The ID might not be known to the parish at the time the parish creates its information. Somehow we'll need the central server to designate a unique ID for each parish...
  • We'll need a standard format/list of Rites, Dioceses (see PHP Array of Dioceses), event types, etc.
  • Many attributes/fields are or should be optional or can be left empty (like geolocation, address line 2, phone, fax, and email...).